McCarthy Found Out He’s No Donald Trump

Plus: Before the Internet, There Was Harry Smith

Oct 06, 2023

CHARLIE SYKES: The Media Mutes Trump's Crazy
JVL: Breaking: Democratic Voters Don't Rally to Democrat Who Is Indicted 🔐
THE SECRET POD 🎧: Reality vs. Perception 🔐
SONNY BUNCH: Netflix-Induced Apathy and ‘The Exorcist: Believer’ Review
ATMA 🎧: I For One Welcome Our Cinematic Robot Overlords! 🔐

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JILL D. LAWRENCE: Kevin McCarthy Found Out He’s No Donald Trump.

Kevin McCarthy (R-Cal.) is pursued by journalists in Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol on October 2, 2023, one day before he is ousted from the position of speaker of the House of Representatives. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

KEVIN MCCARTHY IS THE LATEST but doubtless not the last Republican to find out that when you’re Donald Trump, they let you do it—and when you’re not, they don’t. So many deals, so many pledges, so many lies and reversals, so much hypocrisy and selling out. So much disregard for principle, truth, and consequences.
And for what?

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ADAM FLEMING PETTY: Before the Internet, There Was Harry Smith

THE RECORD CRACKLES. The guitar strums. A man’s voice keens to us through the ages: “Get down, get down, little Henry Lee / And stay all night with me.” He is not the first to sing it and he won’t be the last.
The song is called “Henry Lee,” and the singer’s name is Dick Justice. “Henry Lee” is a traditional folk song whose origins extend back to eighteenth-century Scotland. Justice was a singer from West Virginia who traveled and performed throughout the United States in the early twentieth century. In 1930, his recording of “Henry Lee,” made the prior year for a regional label, was released. But Justice had recorded his song the year of the crash that would eventually bring about the Great Depression, which decimated the nascent recording industry and made sparsely distributed records like his difficult to find. Today, though, Justice’s version of “Henry Lee” is renowned the world over. Nick Cave recorded the song in 1996; he sang his version as a duet with P.J. Harvey.

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